Honesty (An original Long Story)
Part 1 of 3
“IT. This is Russell.”
“Mr. Ross, this is John Schumacher from ‘Personnel Power.’ How are you doing?”
“Doing just fine. How about you?”
“Fine, thank you. I heard you were pretty good at what you do?”
“Who gave you this idea?”
“Someone you’ve worked for before.”
"Ah…well…alright. So far no one has complained.” Russell twitched his mouth and rolled his eyes at the crackling laugh of satisfaction on the other end of the line.
"Mr. Ross, how long have you worked for Red Carpet?”
“It’ll be three years in August.”
“So they keep you busy?”
“Yep, I’d say so.”
“And when would you say your contract is up?”
“It’s hard to say, John. Effectively it was up a long time ago. But I was in the middle of a project at the time, and then there was another one and, then, another one. You know how it goes.”
“I see,” the headhunter acknowledged, “The thing is, I have a job lined up at a really good company, and it sounds perfect for you. So I was wondering if you’d be interested working for them for, say, four months? And, while we’re at it, what’s your rate?”
“You know before discussing rates, I’d like to know what project we’re talking about. It might be very well compensated, and yet….”
“Oh, you mean it might not be challenging enough for you? I tell you what... this company invited a very talented team of developers in for a project. They developed the whole project, so it’s almost done. All it needs is to be debugged. I’m sure for a person of your experience, it would be a cinch.”
Russell went silent. Every project, of course, needs debugging - no one can anticipate everything. But debugging is one thing, and fixing a poor design is another. Many times in Russell’s experienced projects were given not to the best developer, but to the person who marketed himself the best. Smooth-talking with well-chosen “buzzwords” usually, could convince not-too-technically-savvy businessmen. Russell, actually, hated those types. They usually blew the entire budget and then bailed out. If you started something, then finish the damn thing!
“No thanks,” he started drumming the desk with his fingers.
“It’s up to you, Mr. Ross,” the headhunter pressed. “Their rates are very competitive.”
“No, thanks.” Russell reiterated, with a bit of irritation in his tone. He knew the market and realized that whoever they were offering, they wouldn’t give him much more than what he was making already. He shook his head negatively. It really made no sense.
“Life’s weird,” Russell pondered a little before going back to his program. “Most people occupy the wrong slots, areas that were never intended for them. Hm... ‘intended?’ By whom - God? What nonsense.” Russell’s left cheek twitched in a grimace. He inhaled deeply, shook off the trance and noticed Robyn standing by his desk waiting to ask another of her endless questions.
‘Speaking of the Devil,’ Russell smiled.
“Is it a good time to ask a question?” Robyn smiled back with humility.
‘Oh boy, here we go again.’ Russell pulled out a notepad and flipped to an empty page and turning to Robyn said, “Just as good as any, I guess.”
“You see, the problem is...” Robyn launched into a long, convoluted sentence that somehow changed into another long, convoluted sentence, and then into another one.
“…and then I did the left outer join with… and then I used the ‘ado schema,’ like you told me… but then the query took fifteen minutes to run and…” She stopped and looked hopelessly at Russell.
“So, the bottom line you want me to speed it up.”
“Yes, if it’s at all possible. I emailed you the query already.” Robyn moved closer to look at Russell’s monitor.
“No Robyn, I’m not going to do it right this moment. Let me get to a good stopping point, and then I will email you your answer.”
‘Jesus sweet Christ,’ Russell shook his head and rolled his eyes after she’d gone. ‘Just leave me the hell alone, already!’
Still Russell opened up Robyn’s e-mail right away. He simply didn’t want her “back-seat driver” presence hanging over him. Her query popped up in front of him, a huge, flabby, incomprehensible mess.
Little by little, Russell reshuffled it so it would make sense visually and, as it was taking shape, functional understanding followed.
‘How in the world did she end up being a programmer?’ Russell couldn’t restrain himself from an internal commenting. This thought was a repeated visitor and inevitably popped in his head every time he had to plow through Robyn’s code.
‘No common sense whatsoever. Not only that she have no imagination, she can’t even connect two adjacent points.’ He continued fuming as he was correcting her query.
“You know,” Russell told his wife while eating tuna casserole in the evening, “it’s some kind of a paradox. So many unemployed programmers and yet it isn’t so easy to find a good specialist. I mean, the right person for a job.”
“How so?” his wife got up, went to the stove and picked up the boiling teapot.
“Half the people we have are just a total ballast. They drink coffe, go to the meeting, write explanation email why this or that wasn’t their fault, but the job doesn’t get done. Fire them and then try to distribute their duties. I bet you we won’t know what they were.”
“Example.”
“This Robyn, for example. She’s such a drag.”
“She’s got to be good for something. Why do they keep her, then?”
“She’s useless, alright, but she’s got three things going for her: she’s old, she’s a woman and she’s got some kind of mental problem that qualifies her as ‘handicapped.’ So Robyn’s a walking payroll anomaly - it would be more expensive for the company to fire her than to pay her salary and benefits for the remaining years of her service.”
“But if she’s such a loser, as you say, then how do you think she’d be able to sue the company?”
“Suing isn’t programming. She’s exactly the kind of a person who’d be real good at suing - just give her a chance. She’s always participating in committees, writing petitions, you know the type. Oh, by the way,” Russell came back to the thread, “today, for instance, I got a call from a headhunter. He actually offered me a job.”
“Where?”
“That’s not a point, where. Some local company, to do a three-four month debugging project.”
“Did you take it?”
“No, of course not. It would be stupid of me to leave what I have here for that.” Russell pondered, collecting his thoughts. “What I’m saying, though, is that right now we wouldn’t mind hiring someone... someone who’d carry the load.”
“So... maybe you can give this job to this person Freda was calling about.”
“What person?”
“Oh, some relative or friend of hers. Also a programmer, but FOB.”
“What’s FOB?” Russell had become somewhat distanced from the strictly immigrant life and now missed a lot of immigrant-specific terminologies.
“Fresh-off-the-boat.”
Russell read the resume. Although it was written in clumsy English, and was somewhat cocky, to Russell’s taste, it left him with the feeling he was dealing with a good specialist.
“What does this guy...” he looked at the resume, “...’Edward’... do here?”
“He’s not working yet - they’re still on Welfare.”
“’Poinsettia 7311’ - is it close?”
“Yes. Do you want to meet him?”
“Yes. But not now. I’m tired. I’ll do it over the weekend.”
The first moment Russell saw Edward he was overwhelmed with the feeling of wasted time - what a nerd. Flimsily-framed, with short, black hair, mustache, beard, and little black dots in place of eyes behind bifocal lenses, Edward looked like stag-beetle.
Not only was his English in the ‘pre-diluvial’ state, he couldn’t even express himself well in his native language. Edward spit out words - swallowing endings and skipping prepositions as if words were just annoying obstacles on the way to expressing his thoughts. He radiated a weird combination of cockiness and uncertainty.
Russell refused the tea that Edward’s wife offered and, just for clarity of conscience, decided to look at his program.
As he dived into the code, his irritated mood was almost instantly replaced with the kind of excitement as women experienced in jewelry stores.
